


For His Sins

by samzillastomps



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Cullen is stressed, Delayed Orgasm, Denied orgasm, Edging, F/M, Fantasizing, Humiliation, Masturbation, Shame kink, Solo, a bit of angst thrown in because why not, dramatic irony I guess too?, fantasies include:, for what ends up happening in the Broken Circle quest, forbidden relationship, fucking in the chantry, harrowing aftermath, harrowing mentions, jerking off, our poor boy, romantic intentions, secret cunnilingus, self love, set after Amell's harrowing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-02-08
Packaged: 2019-03-15 07:47:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13608819
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samzillastomps/pseuds/samzillastomps
Summary: With his ward safely back in her chambers, Cullen should feel relieved enough that the night is over. He should be able to get some sleep. But his mind won't rest, and his forbidden urges get the best of him now that the stress of Amell's Harrowing is finally over. Alone in his room, Cullen takes matters into his own hands and tries to atone for his sins in the only way that he knows how to.





	For His Sins

His hands wouldn’t stop shaking. It was over, it was finished, and he was no longer required to do anything this watch-- but his hands wouldn’t stop shaking. Maker take him, even when he wrung his hands before him in prayers of supplication, Cullen could not stop his blighted fingers from trembling.

It had been hours since he had stood, unflinching, as Eilwyn Amell entered the Harrowing chambers. He had watched her avoid eye contact with him, wondered whether her heart was pounding as rapidly against her robes as his was against his armor. When she’d taken the chalice from First Enchanter Irving, her fingers had been steady. Just as his had been on the pommel of his longsword.

“You’ll be fine,” Cullen had said to Eilwyn almost a week earlier, as she moved upstairs for dinner with a look of concern marring her round face. “Whenever your Harrowing does happen, you’ll overcome it.”

“Right,” she’d replied with a forced laugh. “Not like there are many other options, ser.”

Her voice was always so small, so sweet. She had turned to him with a smile and pulled her almost troublesome-length hair across one shoulder to begin braiding it. It fell in pale blonde ringlets through her fingers, fingers that had worked and worried the ways his did now at his gauntlet buckles.

She _had_ been fine, just as he’d predicted. Eilwyn had surpassed her Harrowing faster than most mages, even. When Knight-Commander Greagoir had told them all to stand down, the grip Cullen had had on his sword had loosened. An ache lingered still in his knuckles and ligaments from where he’d held it too tightly, too prepared to do what must be done to think of anything else.

Cullen shook his head and began to recite a canticle, some canticle, any fucking canticle to try to keep his mind on what should be a relaxing moment. Prayer was solace. Prayer was cleansing. Maker knew he needed both. But in the aftermath of Eilwyn’s Harrowing, when he had finally been able to let go of his sword when it was announced that Eilwyn was safely returning from the Fade, Cullen did not feel simple relief. It was as if the gravity of the situation had found him at last. It had kept itself at bay long enough for him to do his sworn duty, should it be required of him.

And now, in the privacy of the dormitory, with the other Templars he shared a room with out on the second and third floor respectively, Cullen recognized that he felt the need to confess. Guilt coursed through him, this idea that had Eilwyn faltered he would have no doubt struck her down. Even if he hadn’t done it, he knew that he  _would_ have.

Did that not warrant an apology of some sort? Or was it enough that he was doing it for their protection, for his own protection? Did she understand, and was that why there was no fear in her eyes even when he told her it was his duty to end it for her should she turn?

“Blessed are the peacekeepers,” he whispered, but his mind was aflame with conflict. Cullen did not feel blessed. He felt cursed.

The weight of his armor was still too heavy on his joints, the weight of his conscience too heavy on his heart. Cullen imagined he could smell the lack of conviction he’d embodied in his leather, the pheromones of doubt and hope and fear mingling in a heady mixture that reminded him that his faith was lacking.

If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t feel guilty at the thought of having to oversee Harrowings, now would he? If it wasn’t, he wouldn’t trust a mage to the point of distraction. If his faith was enough to see him through, he wouldn’t have wanted to rush to Eilwyn’s side, to cradle her as she fell to the floor, to push back her pale curls from her face to make sure she could breathe as she fought for rights to her soul.

Even beyond the degrading way he yearned for her during her Harrowing, Cullen couldn’t justify how much he thought of her on a day to day basis. Mere infatuation, alright, that was almost to be expected. Living in such close quarters, the men and women of a Circle had urges. Needs. But because of his station, because of hers, this strayed into sinful territory. If Cullen was faithful, his heart wouldn't have even entertained the idea of her. He wouldn’t feel warm when she asked him to accompany her on walks to the library. He wouldn’t imagine her coming to him at night, sneaking past curfew to knock quietly at his door, his roommates sleeping soundly through as she crept through the shadows and slid between his bedsheets. He wouldn’t feel his heartbeat quicken at the mere whiff of her shampoo as she walked past him in the dining hall.

Cullen grit his teeth and shook his head, rising to his feet as he began to pace.

_No. Not tonight. You must refrain from it tonight._

But even as his conscience spoke to him from some deep well within his mind, Cullen knew what he was going to do. What he had to do to atone, to move on. He had to debase himself even lower, to fully become what he loathed, even if it pained him to do so. Only then could he move on.

Slowly, carefully, he began to undo his armor, as if denying himself his basest instincts to rip it from his body would absolve him of the need to be rid of it. First his gauntlets, pulled finger by finger from his skin after the clasps on his forearms were loosened. Next, his cowters and pauldrons were loosened through a series of ties and hooks tucked beneath their metal. It had been difficult to learn to do this himself, Cullen recalled. He had grown faster, more adept at dressing himself in record time, so he knew he could be rid of everything in a flash if he wished it. But he drew it out, forcing his hand to steady for its task, his fingers finally still as they focused on knots and belts.

He vaguely entertained an image of Eilwyn doing this for him. Her fingers were long and lithe, and she was good with them. He had watched her weaving with her elders, using a loom she could hold on her lap as her fingers worked yarn into complex designs. She had shown him proudly, and he’d had to pretend like he hadn’t watched her do it.

“It looks very nice,” he’d told her, and she’d smiled up at him with mischief in her eyes.

“So do you, today,” she’d murmured. It had been one of the many times Cullen had had to find somewhere else to be, lest thoughts of her turned too dark… as they were turning now.

Imagining her hands beneath his arms, moving down to press her palms to his side, Cullen figured that he would have to give her direction. He would have to tell her what to do. She would listen to him, as she always did, with a trusting little smile on her lips, and he would guide her into undressing him as dilligently as possible.

Guilt at his own iniquity coursed through him at the thought, then again at the memory of how her lips had grown slack as she fell in the Harrowing chamber. The two images of Eilwyn, both lovely, both compelling, both sensual and base and treacherous, were at war within himself and one could not overpower the other. She was at once playful and dangerous, innocent and not to be trusted, a woman and a mage.

As Cullen undid his greaves, kneeling before the altar set up in the dormitory, he realized that it was probably for the best that he could not separate the two sides of her. He would forget himself, if he fell completely into his feelings for the Amell girl. Even if she wished it, even if _he_ wished it, the memory of what she was and what she had the potential to become was sure to override all beauty from such an encounter. The memory of what he was and what he was compelled by the Maker to do to her would override it.

It still did nothing to cool the heat fueled within his breast by the way she shot him glances across the pews during morning service. It did nothing to keep him from shuddering when her hand found his as they reshelved books after the rest of the library was closed. She wanted him, he knew, and it made it that much harder to deny her.

And that much sweeter when he didn’t, even if it was only in his most private moments that he allowed himself such a guilty indulgence.

As Cullen stripped away his armor piece by piece, he kept a close eye on the candles he’d lit. They were a timekeeper for him in lieu of the Chantry bells. They alerted him to how long he had been awake, and how many hours of privacy he had left over. When they burnt down past the halfway mark, his roommates would return. He would have to be decent by then.

There were no locks on Templar quarters’ doors, merely a lock on their floor. When he first began playing into his secret fantasies, Cullen had thought about putting a dresser in front of the door to keep surprise guests from infiltrating his time alone. But truly, darkly, the threat of public shame intensified his pleasure when he took it. The risk of being discovered made for more acute pain afterwards, too, each time he realized how he’d fallen from the grace of his position.

That was never enough to stop him. If only it was, then maybe he wouldn’t need it so desperately.

Cullen set aside the last of his armor, laid out neatly on his bed, and suddenly he felt very small. He rolled his shoulders, and for a moment he wondered perversely what it would feel like to wear the robes a mage was required to wear. No large, geometric metals hardening his outward appearance. Merely the curve of his back as he stretched, one layer of clothing separating him from the touches of another. Cullen felt an ache course through him, starting from the base of his spine and spreading deliciously through his hips, down his legs, up through his core. He wondered if Eilwyn liked that she had to wear so thin a layer.

Could she tell that he enjoyed leading her along the halls, his fingertips against the small of her back when she took a wrong turn because of their distracted conversation? Did she know how it set him aflame when she would pull her hair over her shoulder and expose the skin at the base of her neck? Cullen wanted to nip at it, not enough to hurt, but enough that she would shudder from threat of his teeth.

He didn’t want her to be afraid of him; but then again, she already wasn’t. She respected him as far as Templars went, but Cullen was not stupid. She looked at Marlow, the surly older gentleman in charge of curfew, with less playful spitfire than she looked at Cullen. It was because Marlow was a hitter, even if he never left a bruise. When she spoke with Touraque of potions and class schedules, she did not tilt her head and offer up her chin to him the way she did to Cullen. It was because Touraque was stoic, and unflinching, even if he was a kind man and a good listener.

Did Eilwyn do these things to Cullen because she knew he wouldn’t rebuke her? Did she do it instinctively, acting on her own desires without knowing how she affected him? Or did she do it to him on purpose, because she knew that Cullen would always find himself here, on his knees before Andraste, undoing the laces of his breeches so that he could pull his aching cock free of its constraints and take it in his steady fist at the thought of her?

She couldn’t know that, he reasoned. She was not a seductive woman, her sensual charm was innate and accidental at best. She could never keep her emotions from showing on her face. She was as easy to read as a book, despite her obedient politeness, her eyes too wide to conceal her every thought. And hatefully, shame and disdain directed towards himself at the mere thought of it, Cullen loved how her smile fell away and her eyes grew even wider when she was faced with something alarming. Something that scared her or, even better, _enticed_ her.

He knelt to the floor, his shins pressed into the stone, and sat back on his hips to glance up at the statue of the Maker’s Bride before him. Her bowl of flame. Her blank expression. Now that he could feel the cold of the stone floor through his trousers against his knees, now that he felt truly vulnerable and alone, Cullen allowed himself to relive the darkest parts of his fantasies under her disapproving gaze. The fantasies he knew were deplorable. Depraved. To want a mage so utterly, and to entertain thoughts of her in such positions-

With an ill-contained hiss, Cullen rubbed the length of his palm over the bulge at the front of his trousers, too sensitive already without even having begun. He pressed against himself, but it was not with light teasing that he touched. He was reminding himself who was in control, even as he dipped into the forbidden parts of his imagination. He was refraining, keeping himself in check, biding his time as the candles burned down.

The robes Eilwyn had worn for her Harrowing had not been the traditional apprentice robes she’d been accustomed to. She’d been stolen away in the night by her elders rather suddenly, as was customary, and the First Enchanter had given her a new set to wear up to the Harrowing Chamber. Robes that she’d chosen for the occasion, even though she had no idea when or if it would ever come. They’d been dark burgundy and purple, lined with fennec fur about the collar, belted with a thick corset of gray leather so that her waist cinched and left her breathing shallowly. The robes were as close to battle armor as a mage would ever come to own.

With one hand, Cullen undid his the knot of his trousers and freed his swollen member, the cold air kissing its head and making him hold back another sharp inhale. His hand, warm and calloused, closed about its shaft and began to work in slow, deliberate movements.

Eilwyn’s Harrowing robes had suited her. The way the collar opened about her neck and shoulders, it was distinctly to allow for easy access to her throat should extreme measures need to be taken. Should she need to be struck down before turning into an abomination. But Cullen had imagined other ways to make use of its sloping neckline, much to his own chagrin. During the Harrowing itself he had been prepared to run his blade through her jugular should she turn, but now… what if he had been allowed to slip a hand over her pulse instead? To feel the beat of her heart, as tremulous and nervous as his own?

His hand moved faster now as the imagery condensed itself into something concrete in his mind. Knelt as if in prayer, Cullen flicked an index finger across the bead of precome that had formed at the tip of his cock and used it to slicken his movements, his knuckles loose about himself as he kept steady time with the beating of his own heart. His eyes were closed, one hand now on the stone floor to keep himself hunched but upright, his breathing measured but quickening.

In his mind’s eye, he replayed Eilwyn’s laugh, and allowed himself to inhale the sweet remnants of lyrium and elfroot that lingered on her skin. He didn’t know what he’d say, but in his imagination he always said something charming. Something without a stutter or a trail into nothingness. In his mind, he could show her confidence instead of awkward discomfort, could show her how much he wanted her instead of how much he feared her.

It never occurred to him to imagine Eilwyn without magic. That would have been a logical fantasy, would it not? A fantasy where he could make love to her, pulling her skirts up around her waist and pinning her against the wall as she begged for it, without having to worry about performing a Silencing to keep her from hurting him unintentionally.

But no. In these moments, however infrequent, Cullen liked the idea that she was who she was. He liked the dark shift of power that came with succumbing to a mage, if only for a moment. He would give it over to her, if she wished. He would watch her flick her wrists to light candles about them, or extinguish them, depending on the fantasy. In one of his most favorite of late, Eilwyn would simply be in his chambers without pretense, waiting for him. He would kneel before her as she stood with her hands holding her skirts hiked high above her hips, as she stared him down the bridge of her tall nose with wide, frightened eyes. He’d settle before her, his hands at her thighs, parting them to reveal how wet she was with anticipation. Unceremoniously, Cullen would lap up every droplet as if it were paramount for his survival, as if she were a soothing medicine he longed to drink of for as long as she allowed him to. In his mind, he would kiss, suck, and lick pleasure into her folds as she moaned, and the hand at his curls would crackle with unconscious electrical energy. The idea of her drawing pleasure from him while he strained unsated within his armor was a delectable idea. It was the most likely to happen, too, should anything ever happen between them. If he only gave her pleasure, there was less responsibility. If Eilwyn was taking, was he not more of a martyr than a sinner? If he could please her without being pleased, was that not a noble task? When he imagined her coming on his tongue, and he always did, it was then that he had to stop his stroking.

If he kept going through such an image, it was over too soon. The trick was to get close, and then he would hold himself a bit tighter at the base of his cock, refusing to let it pulse and pull itself taut to gain more pleasure. Cullen would take himself right to the edge, peer at his own release, and then stop entirely. He would clear his mind, he would think of the shift of power again, of how in control he was of her everyday activities, and the urge to orgasm would gently subside.

As Cullen took deep, even breaths to calm himself, he tried to remember who he was. He had held the sword that would strike her down. He was posted outside of her quarters for first watch and should she try to escape, he would lock her in and report her. He was in control, even if he sank to his darkest levels in times like these and allowed himself to not be for one brief moment.

When he could breathe easier, he began again, this time with another scenario. He replayed the way she looked up at him through her lashes early yesterday morning. She was short, so charmingly short, that she had to stand on her tiptoes to get his attention, even though Cullen was certain she was at least two years older than him. That morning, she’d asked him if he was getting enough sleep, and sweetly suggested he take care of himself. She had not known that Cullen was worried about the Harrowing she would undergo that night. She had not realized it was because he had stayed up all night, wondering if he could truly kill her should he have to.

She had no idea that he had decided that he could.

Looking down at her, Cullen had thought to himself that he would want to pick her up after it was all over. As a kind of attrition maybe, or perhaps a thinly veiled excuse to resort to his basest desires and hold her close. Once she was in the midst of it later that night, however, Cullen couldn’t do it. He had declined being the one to carry her back from her quarters after her Harrowing was over. Instead, Greagoir had taken her, with two other Templars as witnesses following after. Cullen knew that if he had allowed himself to scoop Eilwyn up into his arms, the temptation and relief and absolute fondness he felt for the mage would have been too great. He would have held her to his chest, his arms beneath her shoulders and legs, and he would have brushed kiss after tortured kiss against her forehead until she woke groggily from her ordeal.

And then he would have been struck from the Order.

Knowing that she wanted him to do it was even harsher punishment for such thoughts. And Cullen did know. He would have to be an idiot not to, and even while he knew himself to be besotten he was still aware enough to realize it. She’d asked him, once, to meet her in private so that they could talk. Thinking that she actually did want to converse about a delicate matter, he had asked her with concern what was on her mind. Eilwyn had looked up at him, blushing, a faint smile on her lips, and had said, “Maybe I just want to have alone time with you for once, ser.”

He’d declined, run off, said that he had things to do when it was terribly obvious that he was on duty. He was a fool, he knew. A blighted ridiculous child, running scared from the woman he knew wished him no harm. Later, when he’d assumed she’d have the grace not to mention it, Eilwyn still managed to torture him in new and beautiful ways.

“May I confess something to you, ser?” she’d asked him as they were both lighting votives in preparation for evening service in the chapel. She’d turned to him with a look of equal parts mortification and desire, an intoxicating expression that he recognized immediately. Treacherously, he had grown aroused at the mere sight. Clearing his throat, he’d turned back to the candles.

“I am not a Sister,” Cullen had teased gently. “But do what you must.”

“I think about you, Cullen,” Eilwyn had murmured, her voice lacking its normal strength of conviction. "I like you."

He had turned back to her with shock, but she was not looking up to him. As if she were afraid, but not of him, never of him. Cullen had stammered something inane, positive he’d misheard, but she had continued with a bravery and an optimistic stupidity that he couldn’t ever embody.

“I know it's wrong. That you can't possibly..." she'd glanced up at him, her eyes so incredibly hopeful. "But I wanted to ask you. Maybe. Just in case there is a chance... Do you ever think of me too?”

Chilled to his core, numb from the revelation before him, Cullen had offered her his kindest smile and told her that it would be inappropriate for mages to fraternize with Templars, and that he wished her no unkindness. He told her that he valued her friendship and would not discourage further conversations between the two of them, but his thoughts of her had to end with that. He told her that she was a bright, shining star in the Circle, and to never doubt that about herself. He had refrained from comforting her further when her gaze had darkened, disappointment coloring her brown skin with a robust pink. The silly girl had almost cried over him. He’d seen tears of rejection that she did not shed hidden behind impossibly thick lashes that framed wide, brown eyes.

And it had excited him.

As his hand moved faster, Cullen imagined what it would have been like to encourage that affection. To tilt her chin up with the knuckle of his index finger, to force her to make eye contact with him as he told her that yes, he thought of her. He thought of her often, and fondly. He thought of her in terrible, immoral, sinful ways.

He thought of how it would have been to deny her a kiss after such a weighty confession, about how he would have turned her around to begin to fondle her through her thin robes. She would have mewled for him, so vocal that he would have had to put a gloved hand against her lips to keep her from crying out as his other fingers sought out her stomach and chest, exploring every inch. He imagined her in a heap on the Chantry floor with her robes hitched up high about her waist and her arse raised to him, her hushed whispers echoing through the empty chapel. He would force her to look at him over her shoulder as they both grew hot with embarrassment; even now in reality he blushed regardless of there being nobody to see.

The Maker would know, Cullen reasoned. No matter if he was alone with his thoughts, he was never truly alone, was he? It made Cullen’s pleasure redouble, in a twisted response to the shame he felt course through his veins as his forearm grew tight and his movements at his cock grew faster. He was nearing his edge again, nearing his pleasure at a more alarming pace. He would have to stop now, take a breather, continue to think but allow his member a moment to twitch without sensation.

Cullen paused, giving a groan of frustration as he opened his eyes to the stone floor beneath him. He released the hold he had on himself, watched as a pearlescent bead of fluid dripped from his straining cock to the granite beneath him. It was longer than the previous one, the tip of him leaking evidence of his yearning while all he could do was watch. And Cullen definitely forced himself to, his eyes trained on himself as his cock flexed upwards towards the loose hanging cotton of his tunic, his body instinctively begging for release. He watched this and imagined Eilwyn directly beneath him, her legs pressed together to force her entrance tighter as he fucked into her from behind.

He grit his teeth against the imagery, pleasure arcing through him even though he wasn’t even touching himself. So deeply did he want this, so deeply did he hate this, that he began to pray for strength and forgiveness in equal measure. His face burned with the ignominy of such an act, his cheeks red hot and mouth remorseful, even as Cullen reached once more for his cock.

The image of Eilwyn beneath him, her hands before her in a sprawl, as if she too were praying for forgiveness, haunted him. He would fuck her before Andraste herself, punishing strokes that hit deep and slow against her most sensitive areas, her juices staining the holy robes on his thighs he would have barely bothered to part in order to free his cock. He would do the same to her as he did to himself now, denying her orgasm after orgasm, punishing them both for being what they were, hating them both for wanting what they did, loving every bittersweet moment of the torture.

Cullen’s hand moved quicker now, desperate, his breathing ragged. He held back a keening cry as he imagined a new scenario, a kinder one, the sweetest he ever allowed himself to think of.

“Cullen,” Eilwyn said to him in his fantasy, the one he drew forth at the very last point in order to finally find some release. She would put a hand on both of his cheeks, resting cool, soothing fingertips at his jaw, and she would stand up on her tiptoes to try to make steady eye contact with him. She would falter, then find her courage. She would beg him in that playful voice of hers, and he would crumble to her every whim.

“Kiss me, Cullen.”

“Maker’s breath,” Cullen bit out, a fevered whisper in the silence of the dormitory, his jaw clenched as his cock twitched within his fist. He quickened his pace for a fraction of a second, the image of Eilwyn closing her eyes and tilting her face up to his for a kiss absolutely the end of him. He would bend his head, brush against her soft mouth with his, taste her sweetness and find his absolution against her tongue.

As he came, Cullen held back whimper after whimper as his mind raced with the truth of who he was. Of what he had just done.

_Cruel._

_Sinner._

_Low._

_Wretched._

_Wicked._

_Weak._

His orgasm rocked through him, lasting several seconds, and his come painted the floor in front of his knees with thick ropes as he rode out his pleasure in primal agony.

When he was spent, when the last of his seed was dripping from his knuckles as he released his hold on himself, Cullen blinked and took in a deep breath. He felt a sense of purpose settle about his shoulders. Without even time to bask in his afterglow, he tucked himself back into his breeches and stood up. A bit of lightheadedness always accompanied this part, a bit of otherworldly humiliation clinging like incense to his numbed mind.

Cullen dutifully retrieved a set of towels and a basin of fresh water, set them down, and began to clean his mess. He forced himself to take his time, to revel in the knowledge of what he had sunk to. When the floor had been washed and dried, Cullen washed his hands, and then his face, changing towels as he went. Afterwards, he disposed of the water and the towels near where they did their washing up, wondering absently if the Maker would forgive him this time. If the Maker forgave him any of the times he’d done this.

The weight of what he had done had steadied his hands and cleared his mind, however. He came back to the statue of Andraste, and he knelt before it in honest prayer this time.

“Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just. Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow.”

Cullen knew he was unworthy. If he was a stronger man, he would not hide such desires in his most secret of hearts. But knowing this weakness made prayer come easier, made forgiveness a more worthy thing to beg for, and it cast out the doubt from his mind that he was to be perfect in this moment. He had not faltered yet, beyond the acts he committed against himself.

In the glowing buttery candlelight, in the early morning hours where it was merely himself and his thoughts, Cullen knew with conviction that he never would. As much as Eilwyn tempted him, this was his true calling, and every other feeling he had for her was a beautiful lie. Suppressing his desires with finality, Cullen repeated benedictions to himself until the feeling of loneliness finally subsided from his heart.

**Author's Note:**

> I am an absolute sucker for orgasm-denial Cullen, it is my main weakness besides pining. I like to think he isn't a stranger to physical affection, although virginal Cullen is also my jam. Hmm. Maybe we'll get to that in the next one ;)
> 
> A lot of Amells that I've read are strong and kind of teasing towards Cullen, which I loooove love love love. But my Amell was naive, too polite for her own good, and a sucker for someone who paid her enough attention. She's such a good girl. Hopefully I can tell you more about her in future fics too!
> 
> **Eilwyn is pronounced 'isle-when' if you are curious


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